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Expansion ensures business continuity without forcing major upgrades
Today, Canonical announced the expansion of the Legacy add-on for Ubuntu Pro, extending total coverage for Ubuntu LTS releases to 15 years. Starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), this extension brings the full benefits of Ubuntu Pro – including continuous security patching, compliance tooling and support for your OS – to long-lived production systems.
In highly regulated or hardware-dependent industries, upgrades threaten to disrupt tightly controlled security and compliance. For many organizations, maintaining production systems for more than a decade is complex, but remains a more sensible option than a full upgrade.
That’s why, in 2024, we first introduced the Legacy add-on for Ubuntu Pro, starting with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr). The Legacy add-on increased the total maintenance window for Ubuntu LTS releases to 12 years: five years of standard security maintenance, five years of Expanded Security Maintenance (ESM), and two years of additional coverage with the Legacy add-on – with optional support throughout. Due to the positive reception and growing interest in longer lifecycle coverage, we’re excited to now extend the Legacy add-on to 5 years, bringing a 15-year security maintenance and support window to Ubuntu LTS releases.
A 15-year lifecycle for stability
Throughout this 15-year window, Ubuntu Pro provides continuous security maintenance across the entire Ubuntu base, kernel, and key open source components. Canonical’s security team actively scans, triages, and backports critical, high, and select medium CVEs to all maintained LTS releases, ensuring security without forcing disruptive major upgrades that break compatibility or require re-certification.
Break/fix support remains an optional add-on. When production issues arise, you can get access to our Support team through this service and troubleshoot with experts who contribute to Ubuntu every day, who’ve seen similar problems before and know how to resolve them quickly.
The scope of the Legacy add-on itself is unchanged, but the commitment is longer, giving users additional years to manage transition timelines and maintain compliance.
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